


Panopticon

by cualacino



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M, one-sided Galen Erso/Orson Krennic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 23:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10371951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cualacino/pseuds/cualacino
Summary: It was all settled: the plans had been confirmed, he had talked his way around the inquiries about structural integrity and radiation. All that was left was the building of it, and the broadcasting. The missing link was the message itself.





	

He settled in, hunching his shoulders against the cold. The wind made itself heard as much as felt, howling through the nearby ravines before finding its way back to the compound and under his collar.

Galen stood out on the balcony - the cold cleanly cut through him, sobering and sharp. He couldn't breathe inside, with the heat and the noise and the endless congratulations, but here the air was so damp and cool that it almost felt congealed, like icy water against the back of his throat.

"Taking in the scenery?" 

Krennic took a place at Galen's elbow, leaning his side against the railing. 

"More or less."

"You know," Krennic said lightly, "it's hardly a party without the guest of honor."

"I shouldn't be here. I should be working."

"Such dedication." 

He refused the glass Krennic offered him, accepted it when Krennic insisted, and set it to the side on the banister. Krennic eyed him, but didn't press the matter, preferring to simply drink his own wine and look out at the dark mountains beyond the base. 

Behind them, noises rose from the party: excited cries and brief, scattered applause. Krennic half-turned to look at the orange glow of the glass-walled room, where the mid- and high-ranking personnel of the Eadu base had been gathered to drink to the most recent accomplishment of the Tarkin Initiative team. Tarkin himself had evidently ignored his own invitation, and Krennic was still bristling at the slight. At times like this, when Krennic felt hemmed in by the Empire's hierarchy, he often turned to Galen, expecting solidarity – he knew Galen resented the Imperial government, and expected they could commiserate over the lack of respect, the centralization of power. And despite consistent disappointments, he kept at it, with the sneering diplomacy Imperial officials seemed to think was amiability. 

With some good humor, Krennic persisted: "Myopia doesn't help anyone. We all need a break. You look tense."

"It's my shoulders," Galen replied flatly. "The pain is worse in cold weather."

"Ah." Krennic gave a tight smile and finished his drink, looking away. He didn't like any mention of the interrogation sessions Galen had undergone those first few months after Lah'mu, or the traces they'd left behind. Galen still had problems with his shoulders and knees, pain that bloomed and faded. He'd never received any treatment – as soon as the sessions were concluded, Galen was shuttled off to Eadu, where it was made abundantly clear that no one was meant to know what had happened before his placement at the base. Galen always thought the interrogations had been ordered by Krennic, but the man shied away from the subject, and he never had his suspicions confirmed. Face to face, Krennic had always handled Galen gently, as if he might break or bolt at the least sign of aggression. But Galen suspected that out of sight, Krennic had his own machinations that never took collateral damage into account. 

"They're all here to celebrate your successes, you know."

"This is for them. I wouldn't have moved forward without my team."

"No no," Krennic said, "All of this is impossible without you. They might be the best and brightest of the Galaxy's crystal and weapons specialists, but they pale in comparison to you." Krennic considered for a moment, and allowed for some self-aggrandizement: "Well," he added, "to us. We'll do great things." 

Galen nodded tiredly, staring at the blue-gray torrents of rain thundering down in the distance. Krennic gripped his shoulder, almost turning him around. "Galen, I mean it."

"I know –"

"I don't exaggerate when I tell you we'll change the order of the Empire."

"You've said so before."

"And I'll say it again!" Krennic cried. His usual imperialist fervor had loosened, turning manic at the edges; his grip tightened painfully. "As many times as it takes for you to comprehend the magnitude of what we are doing here."

Galen worked his jaw, his eyes off to the side. "I do."

There was a long, quiet moment, a space filled by the roar of rain on rock. Galen was close to moving away, or at least asking Krennic to take his hand away, when Krennic leaned forward – or more so dropped forward – and kissed him.

For a moment, the shock was too complete for Galen to even move – in its place came a thick, creeping revulsion, something almost physical. He jerked away, but Krennic held him fast, a hand coming up to the back of his neck. So Galen waited, as he had waited through Krennic's other, less aggressive advances. In time, Krennic relaxed, giving Galen the space to pull away less desperately. He breathed deeply, trying not to face Krennic, to avoid the man's self-satisfied smile.

"It's only been five years," Galen managed at last.

"We've known each other for ages –"

"I meant," Galen said, with effort, "that it's only been five years since Lyra."

It was clear that for a moment, only a brief one, Krennic had trouble placing the name. When he did recognize it, he didn't immediately see the relevance. And so there was a long pause where Krennic squinted at Galen, lost for words. Finally, he laughed, and gave a little admonishing sigh. "Really," he said, "someday you're going to have to move on."

"It's only been five years since Jyn –"

"Galen, you can point to anything you like," Krennic broke in, impatient, "but this is a not simply a possibility. It will happen, one day or another. We've known each for so long, surely you can realize that much."

Galen shook his head. "No."

" _Yes,_ " Krennic insisted. "And when you do come to understand, I'll be expecting you."

He reached over, into Galen's space, and took the glass from the banister where Galen had left it. Smiling, he finished the drink, took his own glass in hand, and left for the party again.

Galen stood on the balcony, feeling uneasy in his own body. He was too aware of his own skin, the cooling, smarting places on his shoulder and nape where Krennic had touched him. Stiffly, strangely, he moved to lean his weight on the railing, staring down at the shiny black moat that had formed around the raised foundations of the base. It was some ways down.

He stayed there longer than he intended to, long past the time when people had noticed and forgotten his disappearance. The gusts of wind under the eaves blew rain back at the building, and Galen's face, his clothes, grew damp and dark with it. And the party continued on without him, glowing with light, bursting into confused sound at intervals, sound only contested by his own breathing, and the rain.

* * *

Conditions on Eadu demanded a new note-taking process. Before, Lyra would transcribe Galen's scrawl into something legible, place the copies in a folder, and leave them on his desk the next day; with the Tarkin Initiative, an aide had been assigned to the task. But for his personal project – for the exhaust port – Galen would write out plans during meetings, pocket them at the end, and flush them as soon as possible. And it was in one of those meetings that he ran up against the problem of dissemination. He worked visually, with lists and diagrams – there was a bizarre little flowchart in front of him, a messy step-by-step of how the flaw in the DS-1 Platform could be exploited. It was all settled: the plans had been confirmed, he had talked his way around the inquiries about structural integrity and radiation. All that was left was the building of it, and the broadcasting.

Feyn Vann's drawling presentation about the latest round of faceting experiments came to a belabored end, and Galen dismissed the assembled parties, tearing his plans off his notepad and palming them as he stood.

He had a little money, he had some small influence, a bit of stature. He could pay someone to get the message out, though he couldn't guarantee their safety or success, anymore than he could guarantee his own. The missing link was the message itself. 

It would be a chip, he knew, small enough to be easily palmed off, hidden in a boot or sewed into a hem, but recording posed its own challenge. Galen wanted to deliver the information himself – his face would give the message credulity, or as much credulity as a traitor and Imperial scientist could impart. And he hoped, selfishly, that he could clear his name somewhat, so that when history remembered him he wouldn't solely be the man who had built a terrible weapon, but the man who'd helped destroy it, the man who had wanted nothing more than to assure its obliteration, too. And on the slim chance that Jyn saw it, she could have some final vision of her father, one undistorted by time.

He had no holorecorder of his own. The Empire wanted a trail of all his correspondence, and all of Galen's messages were sent digitally. There was only a holoprojector in his office – now and then, he would arrive in the morning to find something from Krennic or one of the researchers on his desk.

Galen was in the bathroom when he realized Krennic, clearly, had a holoprojector, likely in his office. It wasn't too far of a leap to assume he had recorder as well, for sending messages to various parts of the DS-1 team, to politicians, and to military personnel throughout the Empire. There was enough time before Krennic's regular visit to figure out some excuse to get to it – a message to a fellow researcher, maybe, or some legal statement, like a will. Galen looked at himself in the mirror: sharp cheekbones, waxy and sallow in the light; sunken eyes, smudges of dark circles underneath. A will wasn't unthinkable, even if he'd have a hard time making a case that there was anyone to watch it, or that he had any possessions important enough to pass on. Galen didn't like playing the sentimental father, mostly because it was never entirely an act. To be convincing, he had to dredge up something too personal, too raw, and Krennic was never one to shy away from prying questions. 

The last damp shreds of note paper swirled down the drain, and he shook his hands dry. He would think of something.

In the hallway, though, like a hallucination, Galen saw a flash of a white out of the corner of his eye, and when he turned in full, there was Krennic striding along, flanked by guards. He looked nearly furious, as usual, but as he made his way down the hallway, his expression changed into something a little more aloof, nearly amicable.

Once their stilted small talk was out of the way, Galen said, a little bluntly, "You're here early."

"There were some mutterings about some problems with the security protocol, and I had a little time." Krennic forced a laugh. "Don't look so shocked. I do have other work to attend to, but this is something of a pet project. I like to drop in, just to be sure all's well." 

"You just missed one of our status meetings –" 

"I saw the schedule – though I don't know if one misses much of anything when Vann is talking." Krennic pressed his palms together, shifting tracks. "We should have dinner. I trust you're not occupied tonight."

He wasn't, but he couldn't sit down for a conversation with Krennic without some mental preparation in advance. Galen managed to say "I am," in time, and he spoke over Krennic's frustrated confusion: "Vann's presentation got me thinking, and I believe there's another approach to faceting we haven't explored yet. I'm curious to see the effect of texturizing the crystals, rather than simply polishing them, whether that could increase output –" 

Krennic held up a hand to interrupt, smiling patiently. "That's fine," he said. "Progress, of course, comes first. What about lunch tomorrow? Your schedule shows you'll be free then, at least."

Krennic had always been good at that – penning people in, stripping away the option of refusal. 

Galen nodded. "Absolutely."

"Excellent." Krennic considered for a moment, before reaching out and touching Galen's arm. "I'll see you then," he said, with a calculated calm.

A cold, nauseous weight settled in Galen's stomach. The years hadn't made meetings with Krennic any more tolerable. He was still the man who had ordered Lyra's death, torn apart that simple life on Lah'mu. For Galen, their meals together were a ritual of swallowing his pride – his self-respect, really – and saying niceties through his teeth.

Lunch presented an opportunity, though, and a deadline. That night, Galen lay in bed awake, on his back, as he often did. He stared at the black half-sphere on his ceiling, the camera that had watched over him for the better part of a decade. A small green light winked periodically on its rim, promising that someone else was still awake, too, staring back at him through a monitor on the other side of the base.

* * *

When Krennic visited Eadu, he took dinner in his room, and was served a meal of a higher quality. Lunch he ate in the mess hall, with the rest of the employees, at the table reserved for high-ranking personnel – personnel like Galen, though Galen rarely sat there. Most days he either had little interest in eating or little tolerance for the open scrutiny of the entire base. Krennic, however, never missed a meal if he could help it, and enjoyed in flaunting every status symbol handed to him, no less than he enjoyed mocking the mess hall fair whenever he had the opportunity.

"I can't understand how you eat this stuff," he laughed, stirring the soup in disgusted disbelief. "Droid food. You know, I could arrange it so you have your own personal selection for meals – your own personal cook, even. I know you have most of your meals in your room anyway. We have the resources."

"That's very generous."

Krennic shrugged loftily. "I'm a very giving man. I only want to ensure you're comfortable."

"I have nearly everything I could need."

"Only nearly?" Krennic smiled. Galen met his eyes flatly, waiting for the flirtation to pass. Krennic relented, stirring his soup again, before eventually rising to seek out the cook and order for something else. 

Galen sat back, exhausted and completely without appetite. The food suited him fine – he'd done with far less and far worse before. It was Krennic that put him off – after all, Krennic didn't particularly care whether or not Galen liked him, not really. Galen presented an opportunity for Krennic to manifest his superiority: he was a former classmate, more intellectually accomplished in some respects, but all the same lacking the ranking authority Krennic prided himself on. This life on Eadu – the conversation, the meals, the stifling grandeur of Galen's quarters – were not out of affection. Krennic wanted Galen's loyalty, his ideology, and if nothing else, his submission.

"Well –" Krennic sat back down at the table heavily, with a satisfied huff of breath. "That's dealt with. Any interesting finds last night?" Galen only blinked, and Krennic pressed on, "With the –" he rolled his hand lazily, searching for the vocabulary "– faceting."

"No," Galen said at length, remembering. "No, it seems to be a dead end –"

"So long as you're not losing sight of the larger project, I welcome any experimentation. You've been here for ten years, though." Galen looked up at the shift in Krennic's voice, meeting the man's eyes across the table of untouched food. "I imagine things are getting...stale."

"I keep occupied."

"Of course. One must."

The human cook and a mess hall droid approached the table to bus their dishes and serve them – the cook lay a plate in front of Galen and Krennic, respectively, and left when Krennic waved off her offer to do more.

It was as good a moment as any to begin. Galen flexed his palms against his knees, bracing himself. "It does get lonely at times, though," he said. 

"Does it?"

"Good conversation is hard to come by."

"There's always your team," Krennic said. 

"But they're my subordinates. I'm sure you understand." 

"I do." Galen never willingly spoke about anything so personal as his free time, and Krennic's fascination at this sudden opening up was written across his face. He looked searchingly at Galen before adding, with gentle confidentiality, "If you ever want to talk –"

"I would," Galen said, too abrupt. 

"I'm leaving in two days –"

"Then I'd like to meet, tonight." Krennic eyed him, but Galen pressed on nevertheless: "In private, if that's all right."

Pleased surprise flickered across Krennic's face, catching briefly at the corners of his mouth. "This is a little...sudden, even for you, Galen."

"Is it?" Galen found a smile and pulled it taught. "I've never been very good at this."

Krennic laughed. "Well, I have a briefing tonight. We can meet afterwards." He waited for a some response before adding, low, "There are security cameras in my office, so it is secluded, but my quarters are more private, if that's what you prefer."

"...It is."

Some dark warmth settled in Krennic's expression. He sat back, savoring the moment. "You certainly took your time."

"Perhaps that's something we have in common," Galen said, bitter, ironic. 

"Time?"

"Patience."

* * *

It could still work. Hardly the way he intended to go about it, but then, any port in a storm. Galen couldn't record the message under surveillance, and more than likely Krennic had a recorder in his room. Even if he didn't, Galen could always excuse himself after an hour or so of grueling pleasantries. Likely Krennic would get bored of him, at the very least. Not ideal, but manageable, which described most of Galen's life on Eadu.

Galen's security clearance had been extended to give him access to Krennic's room that night – he was alerted when the change was made. For a moment, he checked his reflexion in the mirror: he wore his uniform, as usual. He looked tired, spent – defeated, even. Krennic, he knew, would like that.

The special personnel's wing was more or less reserved for Krennic and his guards, seeing as few other outside officials visited Eadu. Despite the fact that it usually only housed a handful of intermittent visitors, it sported the most elaborately constructed residential quarters of the station. The architecture resembled some of the nicer apartments on Coruscant, rather than the hard utilitarianism of the rest of the base.

The door to Krennic's quarters scanned Galen's code cylinders, and opened on a sort of expansive living room. There was a raised level around the edges, with tables, a liquor cabinet, and a desk. The ceiling and corners were free of any visible cameras, so Galen crossed the room, and sure enough, there was a holorecorder propped up at the corner of the desk, between a lamp and a cup holding a handful of chips and rods. 

Galen stood the recorder towards the front of the desk, and delivered the speech he'd spent the last day preparing. It wandered a bit – he couldn't afford to write anything down, so he had no notes, just the facts and confessions he'd dwelt on for years now. He told himself that he didn't have time to waste, that Krennic could arrive at any moment, but these were things he had never voiced aloud. It had all the finality of a death rattle – Galen wanted to drag out that last, short breath.

He had just finished when he heard the chirp of the door's scanner, and he managed to palm the chip and move a casual distance away from the desk in the time it took Krennic to enter. 

"My apologies - I'd hoped to arrive earlier," Krennic said, pulling off his gloves and hat. 

"There are worse places to wait." Galen crossed to him, stepping down to the lower level of the room, where a few armchairs and low couches surrounded a drink table. He slipped the recording into his pocket, and his consciousness of it burned like brand. The impossible thought occurred to him that Krennic could see it, that he would sense something out of place.

But Krennic only lifted a bottle of ruddy-colored liquor, smiling to himself. "Alderaanian brandy," he announced, filling two glasses nearly to the brim. "Do you take ice?"

"I'd rather not –"

"Oh, I beg to differ," Krennic said. He handed the liquor over, confident. "The only time someone refuses Alderaanian brandy is if they don't know what they're missing."

Krennic motioned for him to drink, and waited until Galen obligingly swallowed a mouthful. "Honestly, you can be a veritable ascetic at times, Galen – like a Jedi." He nodded, and took a drink himself. "You know, that's just what you looked like, back when I found you on Lah'mu. As bearded and haggard as a monk."

Krennic looked at him expectantly, so Galen supplied, dully, "I suppose so."

Returning to his own thoughts, Krennic moved off: "I understand the utility of self-denial – it can be prudent at times, even necessary. But when you're free to indulge, why not indulge? Admittedly, the path you've taken has been somewhat thorny, not quite so straightforward as it could have been, but you're here now. I just can't understand why you seem to back away from luxury. It wasn't like this before, though this Outer Rim rock is hardly Coruscant." He paused. "Maybe it's your roots – maybe you never truly can take the farm out of the farmboy."

Krennic turned, frowning now. "For someone so starved for conversation, you're not very talkative."

Galen set his drink down impassively. "I'm not as interesting as you seem to find me."

"Now, I don't think that's fair," Krennic said. "Not by half."

He moved back towards Galen, and as he closed the distance between them, as he shifted his shoulders and his hips, the feeling in the room shifted, too. Krennic's propagandic rant still lingered in the air, and yet his simple nearness lurched them towards a sudden intimacy.

"Krennic –" 

"'Orson,' please."

"I don't think –"

But Krennic didn't allow him to finish; he had never been very interested in Galen's opinions anyway. For the second, and the last time, he leaned in, and gripped Galen – by the back of his head, now –, and kissed him.

Galen staggered back, but Krennic moved with him, his other hand coming up to hold Galen in place. The unreality of it all made him think for a moment that he really was in some sort of nightmare, that at any moment he'd jolt away and find himself in alone his room, tangled in his sheets, breathless and shaking.

But even when Krennic released him, a sick sort of smile on his face, Galen was in the special personnel's wing, still breathless, still shaking.

Galen wiped his mouth with his thumb, then his palm, then again with the back of his hand. "I'm sorry –" He said, trying to steady himself, to find his footing. "I should go."

"Go?" Krennic echoed, stepping in. "You've barely touched your drink."

"There are tests I'm supervising in the morning."

A pause – the roar of the rain was strangely, disorientingly, missing. Soundproofed, the room only buzzed with the sound of the overhead lights, and the gurgling of the heating. 

Krennic shook his head, laughed. "Galen, I'd thought we were past this."

"I don't know what you mean."

"The coyness! The distance!" Krennic gestured impatiently, grasping for words. "The mistakes – your mistakes! Your pretending as if this hadn't been in the making for a long, long time."

Galen moved back, running up against the edge of a couch. "Orson, I changed my mind –"

"As you've done before. You changed your mind about working for the Empire, you changed it again to run off with Lyra, and now you're here. And I may have had to push and pull you, kicking and spitting, but it's all settled now. You've got a strong moral compass, Galen, but it always points you in the wrong direction."

"It's not about morals –"

"Oh?" Krennic said, incredulous. "Then this isn't part of your self-flagellation."

"I don't know what you mean."

Krennic regarded him for a moment, thought, and walked back to the drink table. He poured himself another brandy, and turned the glass in his hand, looking at the liquor sloping back and forth. 

"I made a life for you here, Galen. A comfortable one." Krennic nodded. "Very comfortable, considering your past. I have anticipated your every need, your every whim even, just as I did when you first started with the Empire. If you hadn't run off with that woman, you could have had every luxury afforded you."

"I suppose I can't disagree with that."

"No." Krennic looked green. He set down the glass slowly, his whole body rigid. "No, none of those half-truths, those little evasions you think are so clever. No, you're going to say it. Right now, you're going to admit you were wrong."

"About what?"

Krennic slapped the table with his palm. "About everything! About going against me, about escaping – about Lyra."

"What?"

"Don't think I don't understand – you think you're alone, watching all the other people scurrying back and forth, eyes on the ground, biting and scratching and wasting away their shoddy little lives, and you see someone halfway towards intelligent, who might just be able to look up once in awhile, and you latch onto them, because even that miserable level of intelligence is a rarity. But Lyra wasn't like us, Galen. She didn't think on the scale we do. She was pedestrian, terrestrial. And that's no kind of life to live." Krennic's voice grew soft suddenly. "You're a man of greatness, Galen. We both are. And that is inescapable."

A brief silence. It felt interminable to Galen, dense, almost suffocating. Krennic took up his glass, finished his drink leisurely, and poured another. 

"I'm waiting," he said.

Galen worked his jaw for a few moments. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears, and it sounded like static, like he was seeing all this through a broken screen. Krennic watched him peripherally, amused. 

Finally, Galen brought out, "I should have stayed."

"Mmm."

"I should have stayed on Coruscant. I should have trusted you from the beginning. Lyra got under my skin, she – she – "

"She lead you astray."

Wide-eyed, staring only at the meaningless pattern of Krennic's carpet, Galen nodded. "She did."

"A distraction."

"Yes –"

"A placeholder."

"Yes –" Galen stopped. Krennic's voice had dipped back into that smooth greyness, that intimate, confidential satisfaction. "No, I mean, she – my work is what's most important." He tried to wet his lips, but his mouth was dry, his tongue a dull pumice stone. "Our work."

Krennic clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together vigorously. "Yes! Yes, that's exactly what I like to hear, Galen." He smiled, almost warmly. "You know, you're the same idealist you were back then, with that philanthropic talk. But few people can see death – and let's not be shy, we are dealing with death here – as the first step towards creation. Few people can see power as something truly beautiful. Intrinsically beautiful, even. But you do, don't you."

"I do." He could see the way out. He could Krennic patting his shoulder with that stiff affection, he could see the door opening, he could see the hallway to his own room.

"It's a case of missed timing," Krennic sighed. "There was moment when this all would have fallen into place, but now…" He shrugged. "We're too old, aren't we?"

"Yes –"

Krennic stepped away from the table and gestured towards the door. "This has been...well, it's always interesting to speak with you, at least. You're like a window to the past." He scrutinized Galen briefly. "Intentionally, I think."

Krennic grinned, still a little green, a little off-kilter. "Maybe that's the brandy talking. You have your tests tomorrow, so perhaps you'd better..."

"Certainly." Easy, measured steps to the door with Krennic at his side. He turned for the last exchange of the night, and Krennic cupped his jaw. His thumb bumped over Galen's lips and rested warm, tender on his chin. 

"Wouldn't this've been nice?" He said softly. 

And then, it was over.

Galen found himself in his own quarters some time later, in the shower, naked under a lukewarm stream of water. He dried, and dressed, and sat on his bed in the dark, just to catch his breath, to collect his thoughts. The clock read midnight when he checked, which seemed early – and when he looked again, still sitting on the edge of his mattress, his hands on his knees, it was two hours later. He scrambled for his uniform then, rooted through the pockets in panic, before remembering the cameras. So he calmed himself, he squeezed the pocket and felt the chip's edges in his fist, and then he folded his slacks calmly and hung them in his closet.

And then that brief moment of clarity faded, and he withdrew into that cottony space in his mind, where the world seemed just beyond arm's reach, the sounds muted and the images gently blurred. He sat like that, in the dark, vacant.

* * *

It was early morning when Bodhi docked. There had been a security breach, and the warehouse wouldn't be open until the afternoon, but Bodhi had received his cargo early, and he didn't see much point in lingering around Jedha if there was a chance he could finish off his trip ahead of schedule. He was in luck – the hangar crew were in when he arrived, and seeing as the perimeter checks were already done, they went through with docking. When he was planetside, the controller told him to wait for the warehouse droids and oversee the unloading, since the warehouse crew hadn't shown up yet.

After the cargo had been stored, the droids moved off to the hangar entrance to wait for the others' ships, and for the first time in his two years flying cargo to Eadu, it was silent among the shelves. There were no forklifts moving crates, no droids puttering around, no supervisors shouting over the rumble of treads and engines and the thud of storage containers. He walked around in the dimness – only half of the overhead lights were on. They flickered, making orange and brown pools of light and shadow, and in one of those wan circles he saw someone standing motionless, looking straight ahead.

"Hey," Bodhi called. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder this time: "Hey, you can't be here!"

As he walked closer he saw it was an older man, one of the scientists, judging by the uniform. Bodhi could tell from the code cylinders clipped onto the man's jacket that he was someone pretty important.

He changed his tone: "Are you alright, sir?"

The man blinked slowly, almost sleepily. "Yes, I'm sorry, I…" He paused, heavily, as if searching for words. "I don't know where I am."

"The warehouse," Bodhi said, though it seemed obvious. "If you're here for the perimeter checks, they've been concluded already, so…"

The man didn't respond.

"Sir?"

"Sorry – I didn't hear."

"I said the perimeter checks are already done with, so if you're here for that –"

"No, I was just taking a walk."

"Well," Bodhi faltered, "regular activity's going to start up soon, so you should probably clear out. Just because it's dangerous for non-essential personnel, sir. Sir?"

The man nodded slowly. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little…" He looked off, bleary and distracted, and let the sentence hang in the air.

Bodhi couldn't just cart him out of the warehouse, even if he was drunk, or on something, or half-dead from sleep deprivation. Whatever his problem was, this scientist couldn't hang around the floor, particularly not with the other ships coming in. The light was on in the breakroom, and the door was ajar, so he took the man by the arm and tugged him along. "How about we go sit down?"

No response, but the man went along obediently and let Bodhi settle him in a chair at one of the scarified tables.

"Do you want anything? Coffee?"

"Mmm."

"Coffee's good?"

Silence, again, so Bodhi rooted through his pockets and pulled his wallet to get some drinks from the dispenser.

They sat across from each other, the man drinking mechanically. Looking at him under brighter, harsher light, he didn't seem drunk at all. Instead, he reminded Bodhi of how some people got on Jedha after the occupation – a little slow, a little dazed, like everything around them was slowly draining through a filter.

"You're a scientist? Or a researcher or whatever? I saw your cylinders. Maybe you should get back to work. Probably someone's waiting for you, up there."

When the man put his cup back down to the table, Bodhi touched the pale inside of his wrist, the band of skin that showed just above the hem of his sleeve.

"Hey."

The man raised his eyes. They were sunken with pale purple circles underneath, but there seemed to be some remote spark of connection or recognition.

"What's your name?"

"Galen Erso."

"Where do you work?"

Erso's eyes refocused. He sat up a little straighter. "Advanced Weapons Research."

Bodhi drew back at that, swallowing his surprise. Before he could take his hand away, though, Erso turned his own palm up and gasped Bodhi's forearm in return. "I think I've gotten...turned around," he said. "Where am I?"

"The warehouse breakroom. You were walking around on the floor, and the workday's starting –"

"Oh –" Erso moved to stand. "I should get going then."

"No, you're –" Bodhi stared up at him. Erso was tall, and even in this state he was imposing, if only by virtue of the rank his uniform signified. Bodhi dropped his eyes to the cold coffee in front of him, and fiddled with it as he went on: "I mean, you should finish your coffee, at least. I could go, if you'd like the room to yourself."

Erso sank back into the chair. He looked relieved. "No, that's fine. I don't get much opportunity to speak to the facility staff." 

But he didn't say anything after that. Bodhi put out his hand again, palm up, fingers loose, and Erso took it, guiltily, it seemed. After a moment, though, he relaxed, sinking back into his chair.

"I just need a moment to catch my breath," he said.

"Sure."

Behind him, through the window that looked out onto the shelves, Bodhi could see the hangar door opening in full, letting loose a small cluster of droids saddled with crates and cylinders. Erso's eyes still rested on the table, half-lidded. His breathing evened, and his hand grew warm against Bodhi's own, as the warehouse rattled to life behind him.

* * *

The chip ended up tucked under Galen's mattress, pressed into a little nook he scratched between the sidebar of the bedframe and one of the horizontal slats. Galen told himself it had all been worth it. Hadn't it gone about as well as expected? He had it, after all that time – all the information the Rebellion would need to destroy the DS-1 Platform, all the evidence Krennic would need to put him in front of a firing squad. The thoughts sent a similar sort of thrill through him. After years and years of monotony, he liked the idea of endings.

And if the memory of what he had said about Lyra, and the sour taste of Krennic's mouth still haunted him, it was a small price to pay. Besides, if the thoughts ever really started to swarm, whether he wanted to or not he would retreat into himself, pulling away from his unreal reality.

The camera's green light flickered – Galen wondered if the signal had cut out momentarily. He imagined there was a guard on the other end watching him, or half-watching him – maybe even Krennic. Glancing up at the feed on the screen as he ate his dinner, or listened to whatever high-profile event was being broadcast from Coruscant. Galen imagined that like him, that guard was bored, tired, full of aches and worries. Just listless, just as anxious for a future yet to materialize.


End file.
